


Applied Social Consequences of Group Dynamics

by lupinely



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-10 04:31:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1155106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lupinely/pseuds/lupinely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Troy leaves. The group adjusts. Abed is selfish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Applied Social Consequences of Group Dynamics

They revisit all their old plot points in the week before Troy leaves, because Abed says that’s what you do in a series finale.

“But it’s not a series finale,” Troy says. “A season finale, maybe. Or a short hiatus.”

“Hm,” Abed says. He looks down at his feet, which dangle from the branch where they sit in the tree at the center of campus. He looks out over the rest of Greendale as the students below them walk past, as unconcerned by his and Troy’s behavior as they are by the knowledge that Troy will soon be leaving. “I don’t know. It feels more like a series finale to me. Anyway whenever one of the most important actors leaves a show, the quality is soon to follow, so this may as well be the finale.”

“That is true,” Troy says. “The Office never was the same.”

Abed nods, once. He’s still looking out towards Greendale, but Troy is looking at him. Their hands are close beside each other where they’ve braced themselves against the tree. Troy moves his hand towards Abed’s and touches his, so that their pinkies are laced together. 

Abed’s head tilts towards Troy, just slightly, but he doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t move his hand away either.

+

First they go to their fountain, where they each make a wish. Abed goes first, and for once he doesn’t say anything aloud as he drops his quarter, just watches it sink into the water.

“What’d you wish for?” Troy asks.

“I can’t tell you,” Abed says.

“Why not? You always tell me.”

“Yes,” Abed says. “But this time I want to be sure it comes true. I can’t take any chances.”

“Okay,” Troy says, accepting this. The rules of the fountain have been less stringent since Britta was introduced to it. “Well, I’ll go.” He drops a quarter into the fountain. “I wish to discover the means of long-distance telepathy when I’m gone so that Abed will be able to hear all the funny things I think of and can’t tell him.”

“That’s a good wish,” Abed says as they walk back to class.

“Thanks,” Troy says, his hands deep in his pockets, and wonders if that really is what he wished for.

The next day they eat chicken fingers in the cafeteria and update their newest issue of Friends Weekly, where they are featured as Friendship of the Year (Again) (Again!). They play basketball in one of the empty courts even though it’s too cold outside for it, and when they stumble inside, red-faced and laughing, they go to the study room to warm up, their hands in each other’s jacket pockets. When Troy suggests that they go to the bar where they celebrated the day that coincided with the twenty-first anniversary of his birth, Abed balks.

“I didn’t tell you,” he says. “A man threw his drink in my face there. I’d rather not go back.”

_“What?_ Why?”

“Because I didn’t want to sleep with him.”

“That’s not a reason to throw your drink at someone,” Troy says, furious, and he can feel his face growing hot.

“Maybe we shouldn’t revisit old plot points,” Abed says. “It is pretty contrived. Let’s do something else.”

“Fine,” Troy says, still angry at someone he’s never met and wishing Abed had told him this sooner. “What do you want to do then?”

Abed thinks for a moment. “You know the new security cameras on campus? I was thinking we should perform silent plays for them. It’s a new medium, I’m pretty excited to try it.”

“Okay,” Troy says; “yeah, let’s do it,” and they do.

(“Do you think we’ll have time to build a jaeger before I go?” Troy asks later that night, when they’re falling asleep.

“Probably not,” Abed says. “Logistically it’s improbable, and when we build our jaeger I want to be sure it is in perfect working condition so that nothing affects the neural link when we drift.”

“Damn,” Troy says, and falls asleep.)

+

Britta’s the one who notices what they’re doing first.

“We were going to tell you guys,” Abed says. “We wanted to ask if you wanted to have another paintball fight.”

“No,” Jeff says emphatically from where he sits bent over his phone, his legs on the study table. “Absolutely not.”

“That’s what we thought,” Troy says. “So we just had one by ourselves.”

Annie looks betrayed. “Without me?”

Abed shrugs. Annie looks to Britta for support, but Britta is still watching Troy and Abed suspiciously.

“You guys are going to be okay, right?” she says. “Troy’s not going to be gone forever after all.”

“Of course we are,” Abed says. 

And he smiles big and wide, in the exact way that Troy knows Abed does when he’s imitating someone else’s smile.

And Troy thinks, oh.

+

“I’m worried about them,” Britta announces to the group when Troy and Abed have left the study room.

“You’re always worried about something,” Jeff says. “They’re just having fun, leave them alone.”

“Just because you never want to take anything seriously—”

“No, I take _serious_ things seriously.”

“How can you say this isn’t serious?”

“Guys, would you _stop?”_ Annie asks. She’s looking at the door through which Abed and Troy have just departed, and she looks a little sad. But when she stands to leave as well, she only says, “They’ll be all right, Britta. Not everything requires an intervention.”

“How do you know that for sure though?” Britta asks, ignoring Jeff, who is making faces at her. 

“Well, having been the subject of an actual intervention, I feel as if I’m more of an authority on the matter than you are.” Annie sounds somewhat cold, and she leaves the room without saying anything further on the matter.

Britta kicks Jeff under the table when he starts to laugh at her. “Shut up, Winger,” she says. “Shirley, you agree with me, don’t you?”

“I’m sorry, Britta,” Shirley says. “Of course we’re all going to miss Troy. But I don’t think there’s anything you can do to make that less painful than it’s going to be.”

“So therefore I shouldn’t try?”

“I don’t know,” Shirley says. “But as one offender of this particular crime to another, let me tell you this: don’t meddle.”

+

The first few days after Troy leaves are quiet. The five of them sit at a table that feels half empty, and Jeff teaches his classes, and Britta, Annie, Shirley, and Abed attend theirs. Annie asks Abed if he wants to sit in on her introductory forensics class with her, and to her surprise, he says yes.

She links her arm with his as they walk. It’s cold outside, and the wind brings a chill to both their faces, and Abed’s eyes are bright. Annie leans her head on his shoulder. 

“How did you know that I would like forensics?” she asks him. “I’ve never liked a class as much as this one before. I never even would have taken it if you hadn’t suggested it.”

She can feel him shrug. “I know you,” he says, simply, and she squeezes his arm, and takes notes in class with Abed sitting beside her, drawing concept sketches on the other page of her notebook.

Despite what she’d said to Britta, Annie is worried about Abed, but she doesn’t always agree with Britta’s methods. As someone’s who’s been to therapy—as someone who’s been called crazy, too, though not in the same way that Abed has—Annie can’t help but resent Britta for trying to act as Abed’s therapist when she doesn’t have any credentials to her name, or any real knowledge of what therapy is supposed to accomplish.

Being friends with someone doesn’t make you their therapist. It makes you their support group; you’re there for them, but you shouldn't try to fix them, especially if they’re not broken.

“Do you want to do something tonight?” Annie asks Abed after the class gets out. “We could get dinner somewhere, or see a movie if you want.”

“No,” Abed says. He pauses. “Thank you.”

“Or we could watch Inspector Spacetime,” Annie says. “I haven’t seen past the first season yet.”

“You hated the first season.”

“Yeah, I know,” Annie says. “But—”

“It’s okay, Annie,” Abed says. “I don’t need you to be Troy.”

“I’m not trying to be Troy.”

“Maybe not,” Abed says, “but if it’s all the same to you, I want to be alone tonight. I’ll see you at home.”

And he walks away, his long shadow trailing after him as he walks across campus in the direction of the setting sun, leaving Annie to stand there, half-stunned, and watch him go, as a terrible grief for Troy of her own wells up and threatens to overwhelm her. 

Partner and Hoolihan, she thinks, and misses Troy as if a part of herself has been removed by force, cut away with a scalpel.

+

The first day on the open ocean is terrifying.

At least on the river there’d been something around them to keep them focused, to let them know that they were headed in the right direction. But on the sea, once the coast has fallen away behind them, is like being stranded without hope of rescue. It takes Troy’s breath away.

“Do you think this is what it’d feel like if we crash landed on an alien home world and lost all connection with Starfleet and had to fend for ourselves?” Troy asks.

Levar says, “If I had to hazard a guess.”

Being able to call him Levar—being able to _speak to Levar_ —is like an epiphany all in itself. It means that Troy knows that he can do this, can face the journey ahead of him without withdrawing into himself and singing the Reading Rainbow theme under his breath. Now he and Levar can sing that together loudly every night under the stars. Hopefully Levar is up for that, because now that Troy has had the idea, there’s no way that it’s not happening.

Abed would want to know about this, Troy thinks, and promises to make a list of all the things he’s going to tell Abed when he gets back. Or when he figures out how to contact him telepathically. Whichever happens first. 

“I wish I could thank Pierce,” Troy says later that night, when the stars are out and the air is cold and he can’t stop looking up at the sky. “You know, he’s the reason you and I met in the first place.”

“And you’ll get the chance to,” Levar says; “whether in this life or the next.”

+

Britta finds Annie sitting by herself in the study room between classes, and she’s crying.

Britta almost doesn’t go up to her—remember what Shirley said, she thinks. Don’t meddle.

But Annie looks so tired and so alone, and Britta knows that if Shirley were here, she’d do the same exact thing.

“Hey, buddy,” Britta says slowly, closing the door behind her. Annie, startled, tries to wipe her eyes dry discreetly on her sleeves. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” Annie says, distracted. She packs up her things and gets to her feet. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it, Britta. I’m fine.”

“You’ve said that several times.” Britta watches as Annie carefully pushes in her chair the way that she always does and heads for the door. “Annie, wait. Please talk to me.”

“As friends?” Annie asks sharply, as if against her own better judgment. “Or as my wannabe-psychologist?”

“Friends,” Britta says, “as friends, Annie, of course as friends,” and that stops Annie in her tracks. When she turns around, there are tears in her eyes again, but her jaw is set and they do not fall.

“I don’t want to go home,” she says, quietly. “It’s not the same without Troy there anymore.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Britta says, “there’s been a fundamental shift in the dynamic of—” She sees the look on Annie’s face and stops. “Sorry.”

“Everything feels so—so big and empty,” Annie continues. “I don’t know how to fill the silences. Abed won’t talk to me, and I need Abed to talk to me, but we’re—” She shrugs. “We don’t talk.”

“That won’t last forever,” Britta says. She stands there, feeling small in her leather jacket, and watches the way grief looks on Annie’s hands. Finally, she says, “Want me to give you a ride home? We can pick up Chinese if you want.”

Annie smiles, and sniffs, and says, “Thank you, Britta.”

+

Shirley bakes a cake a few nights before Troy’s last day, and they all convene at the apartment to eat it. Shirley looks nervous, and upset, and at first Troy can’t figure out why.

“I’m sorry I never let you teach me how to bake,” he tells her. “We will when I get back, okay? I promise.”

“Oh, that’s not it,” she says, and quickly wipes her eyes before angrily setting the dishtowel onto the counter. Troy hadn’t even known they owned a dishtowel. Maybe Annie bought it. “You have everything you need, right? All the food and other supplies and gear you’ll need when you’re out there all alone by yourself?”

“Yeah,” Troy says, though truthfully he’s not completely sure. He has all the items on the list of zombie apocalypse survival gear that he and Abed had written a few years ago, and a lot of Pop-Tarts, so he should probably be fine.

“I can’t believe Pierce is doing this to you,” Shirley says. “Oh, Troy.”

“I’m glad,” Troy says. “Really, Shirley. It’s all right.”

She reaches out her hands, and Troy takes them in his. “You be careful out there, okay?” Shirley says, and Troy nods. “If anyone tries to sell you marijuana, you say no, right?”

“Yeah,” Troy says, “of course,” and decides not to tell her about all the times Britta has gotten him high.

He sees Jeff and Abed later, talking quietly. Jeff looks horribly uncomfortable and out of his element, but Abed watches his face intently, looking in Jeff’s eyes. Troy isn’t jealous; he’s over that now. He knows where he stands with Abed, and he knows Jeff care about Abed too. Abed doesn’t need looking after, but Troy can’t help but be glad that Jeff will be here when he’s gone. And hopefully Jeff will make sure that Abed doesn’t start hiring that company of celebrity impersonators again.

+

Abed wakes up in the second week after Troy leaves and hears Annie in the kitchen, alone, washing dishes, and goes out to see her.

She looks surprised to see him. “Did I wake you?”

“No.” He picks up the dishtowel and helps her dry the dishes before putting them away in the cabinets. They work in silence for a long time. That is something Abed has always appreciated about Annie. She can be content with silence in the same way that he is, and that is a comfort to him. 

“I’m sorry for not being a good roommate,” he says. “I know it’s hard to live with me now that Troy’s gone.”

“Oh, that’s not it at all, Abed,” Annie says. “We’re both just sad, and the apartment feels too big for us, and we don’t know how we’re going to make rent next month—but you’re not a bad roommate.”

“I was worried,” Abed says.

She reaches out and touches his hand, smiles at him. “Well, don’t be.”

+

Jeff doesn’t ask how Abed is doing, but Abed can tell he’s thinking about it. His face is different when he looks at Abed sometimes—the way that it gets when Abed is doing something that worries Jeff but Jeff doesn’t want to acknowledge it. Instead, he tries to get Abed drunk, and they watch The Breakfast Club. As far as displays of emotional support goes, Abed thinks this is a pretty good one.

Britta makes her embarrassed, nervous smile and doesn’t ask Abed about his mental health, which he appreciates, and smiles more cleanly at him when he holds his hand out to her while they walk to class, and she takes it. 

Shirley wraps Abed up in a big hug, and for once Abed doesn’t resist to someone else’s touch, just allows himself to be hugged, and to be loved.

+

The night before Troy leaves, Abed crawls into bed, turns off the light, and lies on his side with his back to Troy. His thin chest expands as he breathes, shallowly, and steals all of Troy’s blankets.

The space between them feels like lightyears. But they have traveled lightyears before, thousands of them. The dreamatorium might be gone, but its power is not. Troy reaches out and runs his fingertips over Abed’s side, sliding his hand on his skin and holding him by the hipbone, grounding himself in Abed, telling him, without words, that he’s here, that they both are, and they’re both real.

Abed doesn’t say anything, but he goes tense and does not respond when Troy sighs and presses up against him, sliding his hand up Abed’s chest and nuzzling his face against the back of his neck.

“Sleepy?” he asks. “Or f-i-n-e?” F-i-n-e is when Abed is too uncomfortable in his own skin for sex, or too disconnected, is what he calls it, in his own head, or when Troy is feeling too many things at once, and so they both only want to snuggle.

“Not f-i-n-e,” Abed says. He says nothing else, but slowly relaxes against Troy so that the line of his back is no longer rigid. Troy can smell the soap on his skin when he breathes in.

“Okay,” Troy says. “Sleepy, then?”

“No,” Abed says. “I’m—”

He stops. Troy waits, rubbing circles onto Abed’s stomach with his fingertips. He is patient to let Abed finish, never in a hurry to fill Abed’s silences with foreign and wrong words the way that other people are.

“Sad,” Abed says, finally, and Troy stops making circles.

“Oh,” he says, and after a moment, “me too.”

“You are?” Abed asks. “You seem happy whenever anyone asks you. Why didn’t you tell me?” He speaks quickly. “You know you need to explain what you’re feeling when you think it might be confusing for me to interpret.”

“I know,” Troy says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to know.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t want you to be sad,” Troy says. “And you are, and I’m sorry, and I don’t know how to make you feel better, and I don’t know if you want me to kiss you right now or not. Can I kiss you?”

“I don’t know,” Abed says. “Let’s try, and I’ll tell you.”

Troy presses his mouth to the back of Abed’s neck. “Good?” Then below Abed’s ear, and along the line of his jaw, and then he stops above Abed’s mouth, just close enough so that their lips barely brush against each other, but not close enough to apply pressure.

“So?” he asks, and Abed seems torn.

“Yes,” he says, finally, and Troy lowers himself on his elbows to meet Abed’s mouth. He’s relieved when Abed arches up against him, just slightly, but enough.

“Good,” Troy says, into Abed’s mouth, muffled. “Good, because I’ve really wanted to kiss you, all day, so much, and I didn’t want to leave before I did it again, because that would just be awful.”

Abed puts his hands on either side of Troy’s face and brings him closer again, presumably to quiet him, and Troy is happy enough to oblige him. Abed kisses in a lot of different ways; he can kiss like Don Draper, or like a stranger, or like the hero of a fantasy series. But Troy likes it best when he kisses like Abed, and that’s what he does now, slow and methodical, his fingertips like bullet points on Troy’s skin, the places where their bodies touch warping the weft of the universe they inhabit.

“I’m going to tell you what I wished for,” Abed says.

“You don’t have to,” Troy says.

“I wished that you wouldn’t leave.” Abed watches as Troy sits up, away from him. “It was selfish. I don’t want you to go. But I want you to go. I want you to experience the things that you want to. But I don’t want you to leave.”

He looks up at the ceiling. “That’s why,” he says. “Not f-i-n-e. That’s why.”

“You feel guilty?” Troy asks. The shadows on Abed’s face make him look older than he is, like someone else. Troy wants to reach over and turn on the lights but he doesn’t want to move. He holds on tightly to Abed’s hands when Abed tries to roll away from him, and he thinks, no, don’t go, don’t leave me, and suddenly he understands.

“I love you,” he says. “You know that, don’t you? And nothing is going to change that. Not this, or anything else.”

Abed is motionless. His eyes are dark, and the calluses of his hands are rough against Troy’s fingertips, and Troy wants to pull him closer even though he knows they’re not going to be close at all. 

“I’ve said that before, right?” Troy asks, starting to feel helpless, that inevitable slide of panic. “I’ve said it enough? I can say it again, I’ll keep saying it—”

“You don’t need to say it again,” Abed says. “I know.”

“I love you, Abed,” Troy says anyway. “And I don’t feel guilty for that.”

Abed blinks. His hands flex in Troy’s. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” Troy says, and leans in to kiss him again. “Now go to sleep, okay?”

Abed puts his fingers on Troy’s mouth, then the line of his jaw. “I said I wasn’t sleepy.”

And he kisses Troy again, more fervently, and slides his free hand down the curve of Troy’s spine, and Troy thinks, belatedly, oh.

Abed’s got thin and wonderful hands, but even if they weren’t they would still be Troy’s favorite hands because they’re Abed’s, and they’re currently sliding under the hem of Troy’s boxers and making Things happen to what was admittedly already a pretty dire situation there. 

Troy lets out a breath against Abed’s neck, and kisses him, and nips his teeth against him, and pushes his own boxers all the way down before going for the hem of Abed’s. Abed is quiet in bed, almost always, whereas Troy rarely ever is, but Abed makes a small sound, a quiet “oh” when Troy touches him and scrapes his teeth against Abed’s neck at the same time.

Troy presses up against Abed, and both their hands are caught between them, and that’s fine, the blood is already burning under Troy’s skin, and he starts to kiss just above Abed’s collarbone again, gently at first and then more insistently, so that when he pulls away there’s the bare hint of a mark. Troy thinks, I made that, I put that there, and suddenly he wants to put more.

Still rubbing Abed, but unsure of what to think by this, Troy sits up a little and asks, “Is this okay?” He passes the fingers of his free hand over the mark on Abed’s neck.

Abed arches a little, closing his eyes as if thinking and straining his head to the side. “Hm,” he says. “I don’t particularly care for it.”

“Okay,” Troy says, “I’ll stop, then.”

“No,” Abed says. “Don’t. Keep doing it. It’s okay.” His breath hitches when Troy twists his hand, and he does the same to Troy in response, and Troy grins.

“Okay,” Troy says, again, breathless now, and he kisses Abed on the mouth, and then he slides his mouth against the side of Abed’s neck and kisses him there, hard enough to leave a mark, again and again, until Abed begins to move his hand faster, the rhythm and pace of which he knows will have Troy’s knees week in minutes, and Troy licks the hollow of Abed’s throat and does the same as the sounds that once embarrassed him gather behind his teeth. 

Troy comes first, his whole body shaking, and he falls against Abed, breathing hard against his neck. Abed holds him up until he stops whimpering. One of his hands is in Troy’s hair, and Troy is surprised when Abed turns his head and kisses Troy on the forehead, just once.

Abed comes shortly after, silently, but his hand tightens in Troy’s hair, and Troy hides a smile against the side of Abed’s neck.

“Sleepy now?” he asks, when Abed finishes trembling.

“Mm,” Abed says, quietly. His eyes are closed.

Troy kisses the corner of his mouth. “Love you.”

“Love you,” Abed says, and Troy curls around him, gripping him with the tips of his fingers, half-hoping that the morning will never come, so that he never has to let go.

+

There are a few things Abed knows for certain. Before he met Troy, he didn’t have friends. That’s just a fact. It doesn’t necessarily bother him, and it hadn’t then. There’d been no one to get him out of the lockers he got shoved into, but the janitors found him eventually, so it’s not as if it mattered.

And he knows, even though Troy is gone for now, that he is not alone. But it still feels like it. 

They all feel it, he thinks. When the heart of the trio gets killed off in stories, the other two are never the same again. Their study group isn’t a trio, and Troy isn’t dead, but he is the heart of them all, and things aren’t the same without him. That’s logic. That’s a basic understanding of genre tropes. 

Abed doesn’t have to explain that to the others. Britta would say it’s a psychological response to grief. Annie would say it’s just human nature. Shirley would ask God about it. Jeff would just laugh.

But they all feel it.

Not the way I do, Abed thinks, surprised by how selfish he feels, and how good it is to feel it. They won’t ever feel this the way that I do, and they’ll all think I don’t really feel it at all.

+

The marks that Troy left are already fading. Abed, rubbing his fingertips over them until they hurt, marvels at how much he doesn’t want them to go. 


End file.
